Today we’re talking about a game that was absolutely brilliant for me and at the same time a major disappointment – or rather a series. “The Book Of Unwritten Tales” was completely unknown to me, started out very strong, but then unfortunately let me down. You can find out exactly how here.

When I saw the cover of the game, I wasn’t really convinced at first: a man, a woman, a gnome and a… critter. The gnome is holding a ring and in the background you can see a tower colored dark red – is that a cheap “Lord of the Rings” knock-off? However, given that it’s a point & click adventure, I thought that was unlikely.

And in the first few minutes I was taught better. The game’s prologue introduces you to the story while explaining the basic controls at the same time. Although explained is a little generous: but you find them out very intuitively. I don’t want to go into too much detail about the story, since I can highly recommend playing the first part. Just this much: the fantasy world we are in is at war (good versus evil, that’s all you need to know). There is a powerful artifact that can decide it’s fate in an instance. We must find it before the enemy does.

“We” in this case is the elf Ivo, who we also play in the prologue. There are also the gnome Willbur and the human Nate, who also has a companion – Critter. Depending on the chapter of the game, we either play one of the three or can switch back and forth between them. They then complement each other: Willbur can move forward in narrow corridors due to his size, Nate as a human can reach higher objects.

In the classic point & click manner, we point and click our way through the area, collect items, combine them and solve the simplest puzzles in the most cumbersome ways – we know it that way, we like it that way.

Technically, the game has nothing to complain about either. It ran very smoothly, there were no bugs or crashes. The 3D graphics on the cover, which looked a bit cheap, looked good – better than I thought, actually.

But what triggered this wide range of feelings in me now?

In principle it was the qualitative difference between the parts. I found the first one perfect in every respect: the story isn’t very original, but it’s still very entertaining. The humor was spot on – it wasn’t thrown around with self-mockery and 4-wall breaks to justify a bad game, but it was used selectively and appropriately. There was an incredible amount of references to other games, series, movies – everything! But this is always very well integrated into the events and never disturbing or forced. As I said, I can also highly recommend the first part!

Then there were the other two. “The Critter Chronicles” is a prequel to the first part, “Volume II” is the sequel. Above all, “The Critter Chronicles” had a problem: they really wanted to build on the success of the first part and overdid it. Infinitely many and inappropriate references, some of which were very forced and had no purpose in terms of content – some of them were just items that had a certain form. That’s not to say there weren’t good moments, they were just greatly overshadowed by the over the top and forced moments.

Apart from that, the prequel was quite short and had some inconsistencies in the story. These were not too bad and mostly due to the fact that there was already a sequel. Nevertheless, one could have put more effort in some places.

And then we have the second part. This one was… okay. The humor was good, the exaggerated passages were reduced. But unfortunately also the references to other franchises, games and the like. There were a few very good ones, but it wasn’t as great as the first part. All in all not bad, you could play.

What bothered me more about the second (or more precisely: third) part was how lengthy it was. It had significantly more hours of play than the first part and felt infinitely slow in some places. Some developments were built in that I don’t think should have been. So at some point you were happy when the end was approaching.

However, the ending is now my biggest point of criticism: there is none. There is only one huge cliffhanger. And to this day no sequel (the game is from 2014). It reminded me a lot of Runaway 2, and I think there was the same problem here: way too many open endings to tie them together in any way now. Runaway tried it and produced a playfully very nice game that you can forgive the many rough edges of the story. Unfortunately, I don’t know if this game still manages to do it, or even tries.

I could talk about some of the game’s technical quirks, but they’re not that relevant. If the story had been better and more complete, I would have forgiven them all – but I have to say that the third game was unfortunately a gigantic waste of time.

My recommendation: Play the first part. I thought it was absolutely brilliant and was very glad it was suggested to me. You can also play the “Critter Chronicles” – it’s quite funny, but don’t expect as much as the first part. You can ignore part two though – in my opinion, it’s not worth it.

How did you liked the game to watch? Did you play it yourself or do you plan to? Do you know any similar games that I should check out? Feel free to join the discussion on Discord!